April 29

Are You Sure ... (April 29)

• ... that polymath John Arbuthnot published his translation of Christiaan Huygens's De ratiociniis in ludo aleae as "Of the Laws of Chance" in 1692 (the first work on probability published in English), and that in 1701, Arbuthnot wrote another mathematical work, An essay on the usefulness of mathematical learning, in a letter from a gentleman in the city to his friend in Oxford, in which Arbuthnot praises mathematics as a method of freeing the mind from superstition?

• ... that mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist" by Eric Temple Bell, since Poincaré excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime?

• ... that Wilford Brimley was offered the lead role in The China Thing based on the strength of his work in both The China Syndrome and The Thing?

• ... that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) believed, in the words of his friend Georg Henrik von Wright, that "his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he was writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men."?

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On This Day in History and Fiction

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  1667: Physician, satirist, and polymath John Arbuthnot born. He will invent the figure of John Bull.

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  1854: Mathematician, physicist, and engineer Henri Poincaré born. He will make many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics.

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  1893: Chemist and astronomer Harold Urey born. Urey's pioneering work on isotopes will earn him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium; he will also play a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, and contribute to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.

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  1986: Chernobyl disaster: American and European spy satellites capture the ruins of the 4th Reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant.

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  2008: Chemist and academic Albert Hoffman dies. Hoffman is famous for discovering LSD, which he called his "problem child".